The Hokkanen Team would be honored to represent you in the sale of your home. We believe that each person is entitled to know exactly what he/she will be getting when retaining a real estate team. We also believe that home owners are entitled to receive more than they usually do from most agents. We understand how we add value to your transaction and, therefore, how we earn our commission.

Marketing
The MOST important function for a listing agent is the marketing function. Many sellers could, if they wanted to, look at the tax records for recent sales, set a price for their house, and hold it open. Many sellers are even skilled negotiators. But effective marketing is a task that requires a great deal of time, focus, and experience in order to do it well. Most home owners are involved in only a few real estate transactions during their lifetime. Consequently, the marketing of their home to get the most money in a relatively short time frame is truly a value-added task that warrants an agent.

An example of our marketing function is seen in the full color, four page brochures that we design to market the homes we represent. To see a number of these, just visit the brochures page. Some agents think that preparing a flyer means just taking a digital camera and snapping some pictures. That may be fine for selling a lamp on eBay, but it isn't OK for selling a home worth a lot of money. The flyers that result from these snapshots are, indeed, printed in color, but it is pretty obvious that the flyer does not market the home very effectively. On the other hand, see the brochure for 89 East E Street to the right; the cover invites the buyer to take one and to look inside.

As with every home we sell, we also created a DVD home tour of the property. Click on the play button to watch a few minutes of the total video to get an idea of how compelling this can be in selling a home. Every person who comes by the house can take a DVD home to play on the TV! In total, we usually give away over a thousand DVDs at the box, at open houses, and to move-up neighborhoods. With this kind of marketing, the sellers are able to get their price! Video and DVD Technology The Home Tour DVD videos that we create are on the leading edge of how marketing real estate gets done. With the DVDs, every single person who comes by a home can take the tour home with him/her to show a spouse or family members. People also like to share them; if someone who gets a DVD/brochure knows of someone else who might have an interest in the home, they can easily pass it along to the interested buyer. The power of this new technology cannot be overstated. For more information, watch some of our DVD home tours or read more about this technology on our Why Video/DVDs page.

The Marketing Budget
Some agents have an advertising budget, but they use it to market themselves, not their homes. (Just consider the moving sign trucks, movie theatre ads and more.) Try to pin down many agents on how much they will spend to market your home, and you can get songs and dances.

For the Hokkanen Team, our marketing commitment is pretty straightforward. We like to have our brochures, door hangers, and DVDs all produced PRIOR to the first day that a listing comes on-line. That means that by DAY ONE, we will have spent nearly $2,000 in advance out-of-pocket expenses to market your home. Moving forward past that, we will run Internet ads, incorporate your home into print publication ads, etc.

Pricing the Home
As the home seller, you get to set the pricing for the home. If we think it will sell in a reasonable period of time and you would like us to market the home, then we will accept the engagement and will vigorously represent you. If we feel that the price is too low, we will strongly suggest that you raise it; we have had the good fortune of helping many sellers get more for their homes than any other sellers in their neighborhoods. If we feel that the price is too high and is unlikely to locate a buyer within three months, then we usually decline the opportunity. There may be a very rare situation where a seller is both insistent upon a particularly high price as well as the desire to have the Hokkanen Team represent the home; under that situation, IF we agree to to the engagement, it will usually involve the seller's payment of up-front marketing costs which, if there is a close of escrow, are reimbursed to seller by the Hokkanen Team out of its commission.

Brochures and DVDs are wonderful tools, but effective marketing means that you need to get that information to the public. We do that in several important ways. First, we don't order a handful of brochures--we usually get between 1,000 to 2,000 brochures. Every brochure gets a DVD, and that means 1,000 DVDs as well. Those brochures/DVDs are then hung at the door in move-up neighborhoods as well as the local neighborhood. This means that the property is effectively marketed to people who may have an interest in buying the home or, in the case of neighbors, who probably know of someone who is interested in moving into the neighborhood and can pass along the brochure/DVD.

Internet ads also play an important role in marketing. Most agents don't have a very sophisticated web site nor do they know how to run advertising on the Internet. Our web site is one of the most heavily used in North County and we advertise each of our listings on the Internet as well.

We also do the "regular stuff" better than most of the agents because we take the time to really focus on the marketing. That means drafting visually stimulating listing descriptions for the MLS, open house descriptions, and more.

With all of that marketing, the offers will come in, and we will assist at every stage in thinking through the negotiation strategy and in carrying it out. The other agents always know that the property is being VERY WELL MARKETED, and that plays a role in the balance of power during the negotiation.

Call me -- I will be happy to come over and together we can plan a strategy to achieve your goals! I will be happy to answer all of your questions and help you plan the sale and avoid a lot of stress.